8.01.2016 Y2Y BRUNCH GLOBAL TRENDS IN SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

During the last 15 years, the interest in social entrepreneurship as a strategy to meet different challenges in society has grown continuously. In different countries it has developed differently, depending on economical, political, social and cultural contexts.

Today, social entrepreneurship has reached a level of maturity, and several more or less global trends can be identified - in research, policymaking and not least in the practice of social entrepreneurship itself.

Fredrik Björk a lecturer in Social Innovation and Environmental Science at the Department for Urban Studies, Malmö University will arrive directly from Sweden to share his knowledge, insights and ideas with Vilnius Community. Fredrik Björk is locally is also engaged as a board member of Yalla Trappan, a social enterprise, and the Center for Public Entrepreneurship, a third sector initiative to support civic entrepreneurial initiatives in the region on Skåne.

In 2014 Björk was part of the team that developed an Agenda for an ecosystem for social innovation in Sweden, an initiative financed by VINNOVA, the Swedish governement’s innovation agency. Some months back, Björk joined the Global Wellbeing Lab, a network of people from different parts of society, and all corners of the world.

The lab focus on how leadership and organisations can develop beyond the narrow metrics of GDP, towards an approach were the wellbeing of people and ecosystems are at the center. The Lab is a joint initiative by the MIT-based Presencing Institute, GIZ’s Global leadership academy and the Gross National Happiness Center in Bhutan.

21.06.2016 Y2Y Brunch on Mindfulness and Peacebuilding in Uganda

Have you ever thought that brunch could satisfy both your apetite for food and knowledge?

We did!

We’re inviting you to join a Brunch with an Interesting Person organized by Y2Y Initiative in partnership with World Peace Initiative Foundation and Center for Constitutional Governance.

PAUL H SUTHERLAND, our special guest, is willing to share how he implements mindfulness into his life and how mindfulness can be a tool for peacebuilding. Sharing is caring isn't it?

Mr. Paul H Sutherland beyond his extensive investment experience, is the author of numerous books on financial planning and money management, including Zenvesting: The Art of Abundance & Managing Money, The Virtue of Wealth , Veterinarian’s Guide to Financial Planning: From School to Retirement, 12 Steps to a Care-Free Retirement and the AMA Guide to Financial Planning. Mr. Sutherland began his writing career in 1979 with an article on international investing that was published by Physician’s Management Magazine. Over the past 29 years he has had academic and consumer articles published in magazines, newsletters and other publications on subjects such as benchmarking global portfolios, asset allocation, retirement investing, income investing, forecasting and global investing. His work has been published in Business Ethics, Financial Planner, Dental Management and NAPFA News. He is a regular columnist for Spirituality & Health magazine and has been interviewed by Bloomberg News, Barrons, The Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Transcript, Investors Business Daily (IBD), Investment News, Money Magazine and others.

Two international youth organizations, AIESEC and Youth to Youth Initiative (Y2Y) collaborated to create this highly interesting event that will take place on 7th of June at Café Athen.

Social campaigns is a very broad term which can include social media campaigns, street action or so called flashmobes, social events or any other activity which aim is to raise awareness on an important issue/problem in our society.

In this event you will:

find out about the problems people face while doing a campaign and two major problems coming along with a social campaign execution:

1) How do we make our campaigns sustainable: both financially and long-term campaigning?

2) How do we do a campaign in a conscious way and don‘t bring destruction to the society?

get a chance to network with like-minded people;

have a fika while chit-chatting and discussing about social campaigns and the ways of bringing collective consciousness, mindfulness and sustainability in the society.

International NGO "Youth to Youth Initiative" organized the first international brunch with a speaker on the topic of women's empowerment, addressing the issues of women's rights, women's empowerment and gender equality.

The event was held with the support of Ms. Michèle Vianès, President of the nonprofit "Regard de Femmes", who happen to be a great guest speaker and a specialist on female empowerment topic. Selected gender equality's activists, female rights advocates and community leaders had an opportunity to watch prepared by Ms. Michèle Vianès videos, introducing the topic. as well as to debate on gender challenges of today and tomorrow.

On the 31st of May a number of social activists from Lithuania (there were JCI Sostine, Demokratine Mokykla and Make Sense representatives as well as others) had a unique chance to participate in a discussion led by Tom Brennan. Our aim was to discuss the ways in which young people can contribute to peace building in our world.

During his exceptional presentation Tom touched upon many essential themes regarding peace building process and one of them was attaching labels to human beings that creates unnecessary barriers on our way to peaceful coexistence. Being affected by media and other factors we start to see people through their status, jobs, and qualifications instead of complex, irreducible and unbreakable entities.

By attaching labels to ourselves, we change our actions and attitudes as well as it creates a particular image how others see us and interact with us.

Different image creation separates individuals by creating normative and cultural differences and obstacles. For example, introducing oneself as a police officer instead of doing a police related job attaches this human being to his job. The same could be said about " I am tired" instead of "feeling tired". It is not a person who could be described as tired, he just feels that way for a particular amount of time. One core characteristic is that we are all human beings. In order to create a peaceful world we need to emphasize this similarity by avoiding artificially created obstacles.

Overall, it was a great discussion that gave me a new perspective on the world we all share and the ideas on how to make it more peaceful.